Save Article

Field of Dreams: China Aims to Become ‘Top-Quality Soccer Power’ by 2050

In this March 18, 2015 file photo, students take part in a soccer class at a primary school in Hangzhou in east China's Zhejiang province.
Photo:
Associated Press

When will China’s long-suffering soccer fans witness the glorious rejuvenation of their national team from the muddle of mediocrity? By 2050 perhaps, if government planners have their way.

The goal sounds sufficiently ambitious yet suitably vague. According to a new plan published Monday, China aims to score a place among Asia’s finest by 2030, before making “an all-out effort” to become “a top-quality soccer power” in the subsequent two decades.

What “top quality” means isn’t clear, and this hopefully high-flying Chinese team will likely comprise players who aren’t even born yet. Whatever it means, many fans fear they won’t be around to see it.

“I’ll faint, 2050?” Xiang Yuhua, a sports industry executive, wrote on his verified Weibo microblog in response to the plan. “Could I live till then?”

Another Weibo user expressed melancholy with a touch of literary flair, quoting an eight-century-old verse, “To My Son,” penned by Song dynasty poet Lu You to lament his imminent death before the reunification of China.

“In death I know the emptiness of all things; still I grieve that I’ll never see the nine provinces made one,” read the poem. “The day the King’s armies sweep north to claim the Central Plain, don’t forget to let your father know at the family altar.”

Such melodrama, in many ways, reflects the depth of anguish many fans feel over China’s lackluster record in the world’s most popular sport.

China’s national men’s team has qualified only once for the World Cup, in 2002, and has languished in the middle tiers of international soccer, now rated 81st among 209 teams. Last month, the team narrowly avoided elimination from the qualifying stages for the 2018 World Cup, but still faces an uphill task competing for one of four slots in the tournament reserved for Asian teams. A fifth team can join them if it wins a playoff against a team from North and Central America or the Caribbean.

The Chinese women’s team has fared better with six appearances in the World Cup, including a runners-up finish in the 1999 edition held in the U.S.

Their fortunes won’t be affected by the new plan, a sober 14-page document outlining proposals and targets for developing Chinese soccer over the medium-to-long term.

It adds a sprinkling of new details to core ideas first outlined last year in a landmark soccer-reform program backed by President Xi Jinping, a self-professed soccer fan who has championed the revamping of a domestic game long marred by corruption and poor play.

For instance, the new plan sets a target of attracting more than 50 million people to play the sport regularly by 2020, including 30 million school-going children.

The paper also calls for more grassroots tournaments and soccer fields, with the aim of providing at least one playing field for every 10,000 people by 2030. Every county should have at least two standard playing fields, and new residential compounds in most cities should each have a court large enough to host at least five-a-side games, it said.

At the professional level, government planners say China should cultivate at least two to three soccer clubs that rank among Asia’s elite, and support the development of ancillary industries in youth development, sportswear and social media, among others.

The plan, however, is silent on the three wishes once expressed by China’s No. 1 soccer fan. In 2011, Mr. Xi as vice president said he hoped for China to qualify for the World Cup finals, host a World Cup and win a World Cup.

For now, many of his compatriots seem content with less lofty ambitions.

“Could this be like the ‘Four Modernizations’ of our childhood and turn into a dishonored check?” a Weibo user wrote, comparing the 2050 target to a set of development goals outlined in the 1960s by then-Premier Zhou Enlai. “Whether we’ll become a strong team isn’t important; I only hope that we play earnestly and play some good soccer.”